Homeland Security committee member things freedom of the press in the U.S. is growing tiresome

What do President Barack Obama (D) and Rep. Peter King (R- N.Y.) have in common? They are none too happy about the sources and the journalists involved in the publication of secrets on the NSA snooping on Americans.

Actually, if they willing knew that this was classified information, I think action should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude. I know that the whole issue of leaks has been gone into over the last month. I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security.

President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder has reportedly carried out campaigns to spy on a Fox News reporter who was involved in the publication of leaked intelligence details on North Korea. In that case, AG Holder signed early documents suggesting that the journalist -- James Rosen -- was considered a "co-conspirator" to the leaker and could face criminal charges. The effort to charge the journalists was ultimately dropped as the investigation proceeded, but drew substantial criticism.

The Obama administration has charged more than twice as many whistleblowers with Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. § 792) offenses as all the previous administrations before him (since the Act was passed in 1917) combined. But he's only been able to do that thanks to support of the practices by members of Congress, including House Republicans like Rep. King.

II. FBI Works Towards Charging Whistleblower

News of the long rumoredNSA spying -- funded by Barack Obama's "big data" spending program -- broke last week. Details of two programs -- a narrow, more aggressive program dubbed PRISM and a broad, ubiquitous unnamed phone records seizure program leaked. According to the Obama administration the PRISM effort involved the seizure of email and chat records, but was meant to target suspected terrorists -- most foreigners -- and was limited to a small number of individuals.

By contrast the phone records seizure tracked the majority of U.S. citizens -- including those who never communicated with a foreigner and never were suspected of committing a crime. The Obama administration sought to downplay this spying saying it was "only metadata". However, that "metadata" contained records of who you talked to and when, plus tracked the locations of citizens on a daily basis.

Both programs were authorized under the Oct. 2001 USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act.

The FBI is drafting chargers against the leaker, and possibly journalists.
[Image Source: Alamy]

On Sunday, the leaker outed himself as Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA who worked at Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp (BAH). Rep. King was among the first to call on him to be charged. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is rumored be currently drafting up those charges. Mr. Snowden is rumored to be holed up at a safe house in Hong Kong.

I keep seeing people bring up the Patriot Act or Bush, when in fact this has nothing to do with either.

There is NOTHING in the Patriot Act that even comes close to granting the Government the ability to vacuum up hundreds of millions of American's phone and data information arbitrarily. Repeat, NOTHING in the Patriot Act grants this power.

Also technically speaking, the NSA doesn't even have a legal mandate to turn it's resources on US Citizens. They were supposed to focus their operations strictly outside of our borders on foreign communications.

quote: The government is doing what we gave them the power to do under Patriot

Nope, wrong. The Patriot Act is very specific about what you can do. This gobbling up of half of Americas private records damn sure doesn't fall under the Patriot Act.

quote: Also technically speaking, the NSA doesn't even have a legal mandate to turn it's resources on US Citizens.

They're effectively permitted to do whatever they want until someone actually presses charges against them or cuts their budget. Maybe if we had people in Congress that cared about the Constitution more than they care about the bugbear of the day...

It would be more gray than legal currently, but only because it has not come before the Supreme Court.

Any law such as the Patriot Act does not make things legal just because it is passed and signed, it must also not overstep the bounds set forth by the Constitution. The Constitution is the trump card when it comes to laws, it supersedes all other laws written after it. People can debate whether or not the collection of data without a specific warrant is allowed or not but until the Supreme Court hands down a final ruling after someone files a law suit over it, no one will know definitely if it does or doesn't violate the Constitution.

With no ruling it is neither legal nor illegal. If the Supreme Court deems it unconstitutional then it will have been illegal from the beginning.

No it's not. Prove it. I have the Constitution, the ultimate law of this land, saying otherwise.

quote: What have they done to break the law?

????

Are you a wack job or something?

The legal, notice I said LEGAL, mandate of the NSA was that it would "never" direct it's surveillance apparatus domestically.

But the very definition, what the NSA has done here is illegal. A 30-year employee of the NSA, William Binney, resigned from the agency shortly after 9/11 in protest at the agency's focus on domestic activities. I think he knew a little more than you do about what is and isn't legal for the NSA!

Even if it is legal, they should still face the threat of having their budget slashed by congress or the President for doing something that isn't in the best interests of the American people. And yet our representatives seem to support the spying.